


Gold

by psalloacappella



Series: Chromatic [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art Class: Live Model Drawing, Eventual Smut, F/M, Haruno Sakura in Pursuit, Multi, Sardonic Humor at Best, Sexual Tension, Uchiha Sasuke Has Issues, onesided: Uzumaki Naruto/Yamanaka Ino - Freeform, past: Uzuamki Naruto/Gaara
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:35:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: Contrary to the urban legend, painting the body in full won’t cause imminent death for the model. Sasuke inherently knows this.But as he watches her skin drown in shimmering gold, transcend the human shape in gentle whorls and bends, piercing green eyes daring him to move — he believes suffocation is still a distinct possibility.(Alternatively:  Sasuke’s sprung, Naruto’s in crisis, and their new art instructor just got out of prison.)
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: Chromatic [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100441
Comments: 21
Kudos: 84





	1. you're like gold dust // it rains over me

> act I
> 
> you're like gold dust // it rains over me

❦

Beginning with the unexpected intervention in his class schedule and personal life, courtesy of one chaotic and meddling blond, and ending it entirely starstruck, Sasuke might have completely sidestepped his destiny on an unremarkable Tuesday evening.

At the hour in which stars nudge the void and seek space among one another, drifting into alignment, he doesn’t yet know this.

And anyway he wouldn’t believe in it, intangible notions such as _fate._

(But he will.)

Here, presently: His often aloof expression now drawn in miffed moue, arms folded as they linger just down the hall from a class set to start in less than twenty. 

Sasuke brandishes the printout garnished with a florid pink post-it at his best friend, whose grin seems grossly indecent, and sighs. Between Naruto’s cloud-nine expression and his guidance counselor meetings which, in perpetuum, are laden with a subtext and he’d sooner forget, this entire eleventh hour farce continues to seem like a less and less good idea.

“You needed an elective,” Naruto pouts, “and here I’ve easily solved yer problem!”

Sasuke’s dark eyes flicker from his friend’s, whose fox-like teeth are bared in self-satisfactory teasing, to the paper in his hand. **ART-0328. Evening section.**

Naruto will surely treat it as an ogling exercise rather than the high-minded class it’s potentially going to be, with actual art students using the time for their portfolio . . . though considering the subject, it’s just as likely to be stuffed with guys with the same lowbrow aims, elbowing to gain the favor of pretty girls by acting — no, he doesn’t have to even pretend — like a totally inept-at-sketching slobbering fucking fool. 

“You’re a lecher and a moron; who are you taking this for?”

Naruto blinks, tilts his head. “Le-what? Can’t you stick to words people know? This is why no one dates you, yer so . . .” Casting about for an apt enough word, he settles on, “smart. It’s snobby, ya know.” 

“And you’re so _principled,_ taking live model drawing as a proving ground for your shitty new flirting tactics.” 

Sasuke turns on his heel, stalking down the hallway with a familiar intensity; his irritation knows no bounds and only serves to grant him more attention which he consistently, stubbornly rejects or worse, ignores in the manner of passing his eyes over laden buffets or awkward wardrobe malfunctions. 

He seethes, demanding of Naruto, “How’d you even get time with _my_ guidance counselor?” 

Despite the guidance counselor’s attraction to him, the waiver for useless electives outside his area of study — business: in the Uchiha lineage, the only thing considered worth it if you didn’t want to be locked out of the house overnight, first only to the dark sociopathic machinations and roles they considered “politics” — was refused with a breathy giggle that did not befit her and fuck, he should’ve switched counselors ages ago but Naruto insists that it’s useful to have someone on his side that he can butter up, or perhaps he’s just in the running to scoop up a cougar as his latest sexual foray. She’s clearly unconcerned with cradle-robbing. 

Mei Terumī. Sasuke commits it to memory; he’s going to name drop her in front of the right administrator and get her shuffled to another department. 

Anyway, off topic. Sasuke finds himself hovering in the open doorway of the art classroom, not quite sure where the discomfort is coming from. Could be the fact Naruto planned this specifically for the goal of flirting. Could be the fact that an inordinate number of his family’s marriages were arranged with all the rancor and passion of a routine prostate exam; an unsettling and unbroken wife selection line of dark hair and aquiline noses proving, in his view, that they’re aiming for uniformity and incest (he heard an earful for that comment at the dinner table, though Itachi snorted in his bisque under the narrowed eyes of their father, which, that alone was worth it); further, dating in an overbearing and narcissistic lineage is a miserable affair and he’s been to so many goddamn social events with a dud on his arm that it’s been easier, really, to eschew the mess altogether. 

The truth is, most women overwhelm him. 

_Snob, mean-looking, your dick don’t work,_ Naruto usually says, ticking each insult off his fingers like reading a grocery list. 

This class is going to be a nightmarish experience. Not being able to draw is the rock-bottom of his concerns.

“Are you ready for this?” Naruto claps his hands on Sasuke’s shoulders and leans past him into the room, looking around. The latter follows his gaze: Groups of students he expects, some clearly entrenched in the art school and its eccentric culture and others looking wary as he might seem, a smattering of loners. Acquaintances he knows from other classes in passing, and one pale redhead with a jarring tattoo on his temple, a recent panicked fling of Naruto’s. 

“If we’re here because of your self-imposed crisis—”

But Naruto’s gaze is zeroed in on a woman with the longest ponytail Sasuke’s ever seen, cascading down her back as spun gold and looking not unlike a feminine adaptation of himself. 

“We’ve gone from bi-crisis to straight narcissism. I actually can’t stand you,” Sasuke mutters. 

“Shit’s hilarious,” Naruto says at the decibels of live music, “since Uchihas all marry themselves. Ugh, _look_ at her, though. I hope she’s the model. Although,” he pauses, shifting his eyes to the woman she’s speaking to animatedly, “the pink hair on her friend is so different-looking. Exotic!”

True to form, Naruto has all the grace of an elephant, his voice attracting the attention of temple-tattoo _and_ spun-gold _and_ the girl with pastel hair. Along with several other bystanders.

And Sasuke finally looks right at her, beholds her in a single heartbeat, a shiver pulsing with heat and chill, as a shot in the spine, wondering if she’s truly glowing or if that's just the room’s light. Stomach roiling with a strange sense of precognition, knowledge of an esoteric thing he doesn’t actually possess. 

He’s afraid. If he meets her eyes, they could spark and catch. Powdered glass and crimson phosphorus: Just add heat. 

Watching her, glancing sidelong, the colors of her sparkle as diamonds — pink like the post-it but gentler, a blush, eyes that he guesses are green, jade like old family jewelry but twinkling with intimacy, worn glass sifted in from the sea’s tides.

“Ino!” Naruto rips him from his musing, unravels his trance. Both women turn and Sasuke’s eyes sweep away to avoid impending doom. 

Beautiful blonde has been established as Ino, judging by the way she rolls her eyes to the ceiling and gifts him a surreptitious middle finger. 

“You know her?” Sasuke hisses. A tightness in his chest, winding up in a torpid vise, as he feels pink’s eyes on him in a dangerous way and it only solidifies the notion that it’s dangerous but familiar, that something far beyond himself is aligning as lackadaisical atoms seeking their eventual pairs. He doesn’t like it, but it all has the desperate curiosity of a car crash, the aftermath too vivid and striking to simply ignore.

“We’re about to begin, yeah!”

Two ringing claps, and the room startles in unison at the authoritative speaker. Hands now twisting together and laden with heavy, ornate rings, his grin is indulgent as he adds, “So can you all sit down and shut it?”

For a solid few seconds, everyone’s taken aback. Then, the scraping of chairs and drawing tables, people darting here and there to embark on this artistic endeavor sitting next to friends, whispering ( _unprofessional; is he serious; didn’t he do a stint in prison?!)_

As he settles into a seat and drags a drawing table closer to avoid looking at anything or anybody, Sasuke endures that terrifying electric shock again as the woman with pastel hair takes a seat on a raised platform in the middle of the room. It’s only now it all makes sense — the robe she’s wearing, pink simmering up through the skin of her cheeks, the way Ino, along with another sandy blonde, linger near her as assistants, though with the nature of intimidating sentinels.

 _I can’t do this,_ he thinks, hands going numb. 

“Oooh, _she’s_ the model,” Naruto stage whispers. The professor sniffs in irritation, and puts a ringed finger to his lips to level a look at him that says _shut the fuck up._

Temple-tattoo is staring at Naruto across the room, impassive.

Sasuke wonders how noticeable it would be to bolt from the studio.

“Deidara’s the name, hm,” the professor begins briskly, folding his arms. “No Mr-and-such, this name’s the only one that matters. You’re in ART-0328, Figure Drawing one, Tuesday evening section. If you’re supposed to be here, fantastic, you’re not utter morons and maybe, just maybe, you’ll leave the class knowing how to do something. If you’re in the wrong place, ah well, your life’s a mess and I can’t help you there.”

Eyes dart around the room, meet those of their friends and now partners in Tuesday evening madness.

Unable to feel the chair beneath him or tether himself to the universe, Sasuke’s gaze is drawn to the model in the middle of the room, whose legs are crossed at the ankles under her robe, carrying a whispered conversation with the other two women. 

Ino catches him looking for a moment.

The ground should swallow him whole. 

“Rules: There’s no bullshit behavior in here. This is an _art class,”_ Deidara emphasizes, as if that explains it all. “If you’re going to be a brat, hm, or be immature, leave. Got it?”

Without waiting for any murmured consensus, he continues.

“Keep your mind open, yeah. You all have supplies. The first half will be a series of timed poses, and the second, extended. We’re looking at gestures, proportion, light and shadow, but I’d be impressed if anyone manages anything humanlike in our first class.” He jabs his chin at the woman on the platform. “Oh, and be polite to our model this evening, miss Haruno.”

“Sakura,” she says gently, waving to everyone and no one.

And her voice hits him, clarion calling, his spine vertebrae singing as if tapped by a tuning fork. It’s in such distinguished contrast to his mind’s bumbling, unexpected watercolor mess of memory: The touch of her, though in different clothes, costumes, almost, but the way she says his name is an ancient glyph etched and scraped on the inside of his skull.

_Sasuke-kun._

But she’s not actually speaking. Sasuke slouches low, sinks behind his drawing table, because those green glass eyes are on him. He knows it, somehow. 

“You can’t draw properly like that, ya bastard,” Naruto hisses. His own spine ramrod straight, he’s staring at the model in blatant appreciation, though it also may be a flagrant play to convince his past redhead fling he’s over him.

Judging by the heavy-lidded eyes swiveled in their direction, it’s not putting him off.

“Would you like to share with the class?” Deidara asks, a palm out to offer sardonic shame. “Or can you get your shit together so we can kick off?” Without waiting for Naruto or Sasuke to answer, he folds his arms. “Anyway, we’ll begin with quick sketches to warm you all up, then extend to ten minutes, break,” he nods at Sakura, “for the model’s sake and for your weak hands, and then extended pose for the last half.”

“Wait, we’re just going to start drawing!?”

“Do kids not raise hands anymore? Too cool for that?” 

A woman thrusts her hand in the air. 

Sasuke bristles. _Questions already? ‘Kids?’ Hmph._

“Can’t believe they make ‘em like this,” Naruto says gleefully, his grin flashing a mile of bright teeth.

Sasuke slouches even more, making sure Sakura isn’t visible to him over the edge of his drawing table. 

Deidara grunts at the raised hand.

“Tenten, sir,” she says, curling her fingers into a challenging, gung-ho fist. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve been given any lessons yet, you know?”

“Lessons on what, exactly?”

Tenten’s brows jump into her same-shade hair, completing her nonplussed expression. “Um, line, shadow, I don’t know, _how_ to draw?”

Deidara sighs and waves a hand: A ripple of murmuring, hissing like little fires. The whole class can now see, in full and vivid color, the mouth and tongue tattooed on his palm, luscious and obviously professionally done. Tenten grimaces. Someone else coughs.

Naruto leans toward Sasuke. “This class is awesome, he’s got prison tattoos!”

Sasuke closes his eyes and wouldn’t say no to a tragic and unexpected aneurysm. “Naruto, those aren’t really—”

“Can ya just trust me, hm?” Deidara asks.

Tenten actually stamps her foot underneath her drawing desk. 

“Aren’t you going to, like, teach us anything?”

Deidara’s mouth hangs open, dumbstruck. With another dramatic flourish of his palm:

“I can’t _teach_ you creativity!”

Sasuke lifts his chin to assess if his precarious situation has changed. As if she senses him, Sakura’s eyes flicker to his when he chances a glance. 

_Fuck._ Though it’s a fraction of a second, every nerve ending’s spinning in a waltz and begging for a partner and why can he feel her skin underneath his rough palms but how, because _he’s never touched her_ much less met or seen her, except all his clean and principled lines are blurred to shit, inside-out — 

He stares at his watch, throat suddenly parched at the thought of having to sit in this room for hours trying not to think of the way she’d feel on top of him, the silkskin of her thin fingers mapping the muscled lowlands of his chest, palming the entirety of her thigh in his hand and gripping her close and hanging on, as clinging to the earth before she tosses him off it, a goddess ridding her lands of debris — 

“Ay, timer’s starting.” Naruto’s been kicking him. “I need at least a C, so at least do it with me, huh?”

Sasuke abruptly straightens in his seat, a pencil in his hand he doesn’t remember receiving, and meets Sakura’s eyes across the room.

If he didn’t know better, if he trusted his reality in that moment, he’d say later he could see the chillbumps sweep her through, stippled dots on every inch of her ivory skin.

Though that could simply be the consequence of removing her robe, the bright brisk air and light of the studio rendering her as something alien, sacrosanct. 

Holding his gaze the whole way through, measured, searching him for signs of life. 

She hands it to Ino, then beckons her close with a quick wiggle of her fingers. 

“It’s always you they’re lookin’ at, isn’t it?” Naruto gripes. He’s also watching, but somehow isn’t so thick as to miss the way Sakura indicates Sasuke and Ino smirks at him. Well he did, after all, orchestrate this opportunity even as stupid as he is. Waving his pencil around, he jabs the point at Sasuke. “She wants ya.” 

“Hm?” he grunts, pretending to concentrate on a sketch of absolutely nothing. How can he put her likeness on paper? Like a goddess — like a ghost. Does she even have a reflection? 

“You think I’m so dumb. Well, yer welcome.”

At first the poses are simple, easy shapes that her limbs form with flexible aplomb: Variations of her standing, hand on a pillar, weight settling into one hip painting an unbroken, easy incline from waist to hip to thigh. Studio full of sounds, the rasp of pencils and erasers against fluttery sketch paper, tapping and stimming, the physical manifestations of deep concentration. Naruto next to him, hemming and hawing and holding up a thumb as if to judge depth and distance, which Sakura politely and expertly ignores.

Almost expertly. Under the clean lights, Sasuke can see the slight blush in her skin. Eyes tumbling down the line of her collarbone, sweeping the imprint of taut skin adorning ribs and muscle, current reality and the odd intuition melding as smoky microfilm.

He knows her look, vacant and reserved, avoiding another human being’s eyes. The only moments in which they seem to sharpen, come to life, are when he’s meeting them before remembering himself, tearing his gaze away, dropping them back to his paper, on which all he’s managed to do for the last thirty minutes is wipe his clammy palms on his pants and drill a vicious hole into five layers of sketchbook. 

_You’re a fucking mess,_ he admonishes, _and you’re going to fail a class over it._

A reckoning of unbelievable proportions: He’s never had someone dig into him so easily, much less a woman with hair like a bloom from his mother’s garden, eyes like all the jewels his future wife would inherit, one which he’s never spoken to in his life. 

She must be thinking, because her lips form a pout, revealing passing musings.

Another observation, another livewire inheriting each nook and cranny of his spine. If he can see these things he’s watching her too closely. This he knows; he’s been taught manners. Pressing the pencil tip into the paper hard, trying to will a perfect sketch into reality, he contemplates the absurdity of his own. 

“Great proportions,” Naruto mutters. 

The attempt at sounding distinguished is embarrassing to Sasuke’s ears, but then, _he’s_ too busy thinking about running his palm from the inlet of her waist to the camber of her hip, across pliant and soft skin that he doesn’t know is such _but he does_ and why, fucking why, can he hear his name on her lips despite the fact that all she’s doing is smiling, though now it’s at him as if she can hear his thoughts, see his desires.

She smirks, a deeper pink scattering high in her cheeks.

Hands numb, he surreptitiously wipes the excess sweat off them, thankful for dark pants. 

“Last one,” Deidara announces. His claps startle many students out of a reverie. “Then a break. Some of you are hurting yourselves, you’re trying so hard.” 

Naruto, with his tongue stuck between his teeth, snaps another pencil tip right on cue.

Sakura stands and stretches, thin fingers quickly twitching a strap back into place, fiddling with the hem of the nude fabric that functions to cover her bits and pieces. Again she beckons Ino and a woman with sandy-blonde hair, someone familiar to him on the level of acquaintance, and they chatter brightly, fluttering and frenetic, Sakura leaning into the brilliant curve of her hip and thigh — 

“You think his sister hates me?” Naruto asks, jabbing Sasuke’s leg with his pencil.

Distracted, Sasuke swats at him, unable to tear his gaze away. Feels like a lecher, his obsession painted on his face, thinks of her lips on his ear, dressing her in all the finery wasted on his family’s meticulously arranged husbands and wives, gods what would they think if they knew this, that for all his posturing and dating disinterest it’s just taken one woman to reduce him to slag? He’d certainly never hear the end of it.

It seems crazy even to himself, but there’s no denying this connection, some other plane of existence in which they’ve crossed paths. Perhaps he’s just as insane as the Uchiha line is rumored to be.

“You’ve _gotta_ stop staring, man.” True to form, Naruto’s voice carries across the room, snatching with it the eyes of Ino, Tenten, Deidara, and of course Sakura’s. 

Tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, Sakura’s gaze flits away with an embarrassed smile.

Homicide may be a good way to get out of the course, Sasuke thinks, if he doesn’t die from shame.

“Smarten up, yeah?” Deidara says, leaning against his desk. Now he gestures them all back into place, confirming for the curiosity of the room that indeed, he has the same palm tattoo on his other hand. 

(Sasuke remembers it all now in an uncovering of latent memory, like moss springing up in dim light, Naruto’s ex, Gaara, they’re part of the Suna oil family, and blocking the whole hot mess out of his mind was for their sanity after Naruto got thrown around like a ragdoll by Kankuro, the eldest, a whole lot of public drinking and drama they’ve since tried to bury.) 

Temari, _that’s it,_ sets a chair on the slightly raised platform and Sakura thanks her.

She settles into her final pose, crossing her long legs in the seat and rests her chin onto her palm, elbow in a comfortable crook near her knee. 

Sasuke swallows hard, feeling the heavy way the apple of his throat almost prevents it, bobs and returns to repose and he knows her eyes are following the motion, _oh,_ because they’re already on him in an innocent but expectant way that convinces him whatever’s tying him into knots is not something he feels alone. Again, knuckles white with the pencil tip crushing paper-layers beneath in paralyzed neurosis while his head turns out wild fantasies and memories that shouldn’t be so familiar and easy but they are — the sensation that he adores her and could be crushed by her, on the precipice of something he can’t parse or explain. 

“Crossed legs, gah,” Naruto mutters, erasing his paper, tearing it in gusto.

 _Focus._ Sasuke takes a deep breath, dazed from the electricity in his spine and numbness in his hands, the heat prickling on the back of his neck, actually shakes his head to clear the thoughts he’s having about her long, long legs for miles and how they’d feel on either side of his hips, pinning him, but he picks up the pencil and makes his nth honest attempt, hating that he’s as low as Naruto, as easily fixated on a woman who’s just doing her job, vulnerable, probably trying to dispel the notion this was an embarrassing, stupid idea to participate in. 

It works, for a few minutes. Slopes and gentle, messy lines take some cohesive shape on his sketchbook, at least enough of an effort to turn in and receive — do they even give grades on art? And perfect, she’s not even staring at him anymore, _thank fuck,_ perhaps it’s all in his head, he’s just stressed and repressed. 

But in her wandering thoughts, the tip of her fingernail slips perceptibly to part her pink lips — 

_Snap!_ and a piece of Sasuke’s broken pencil end goes flying and bullets Naruto directly in the eye.

“I’ve been _maimed!_ ” Naruto drops his own pencil on the floor and flails dramatically. “Sasuke, you prick.”

“‘Kay, ‘kay, enough, take a break, yeah?” Deidara pushes off the desk, rolling his one visible eye. “All of you, breathe, take a lap. Get a snack or something.” Nodding at Sakura with his chin, he adds, “You too, take a few.” 

Beaming in response, Sakura takes the robe Ino tosses at her and slides her arms in, trying to tie it tight and quick as her friends babble in her ear, but she’s intent on trying to do this, steel herself to speak to this impossibly attractive guy that’s been her gravity axis for the whole of this ordeal (the last time she ever lets Ino convince her to do something so impulsive!) — 

But all she catches of him is a glimpse of the back of his neck, bright red underneath his dark hair, as he rushes out the door of the studio.


	2. all the gold & the guns in the world // couldn't get you off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Does it possess a shadow of the original, a ghost?”
> 
> _And he winks reminding her who she is how smart she is and she’s blushing and takes him and someone he can’t see by the hand._
> 
> The lights don’t move and neither does she, but still gold glimmers dance as shifting waves, swallowing more of her skin on her exalted path to becoming sanctified. 
> 
> And if he severs this connection, he’ll never know their truth.

> act II
> 
> all the gold & the guns in the world // couldn't get you off

❦

_Degenerate._

Insults only serve to heighten his pleasure, even coming from himself. At first the steps to get to this pathetic point were following a logical line of events, but with one hand stroking his stiff cock and the other, clammy and slick and scrabbling against the cold bathroom wall, _filthy, not unlike yourself,_ desperate to keep himself upright and tamp down any sounds he’s letting escape. They echo in here. 

Arousal’s always been something to take care of, to deal with, delicately and for fuck’s sake you don’t talk about it. There’s a reason no one ever brings home a selection of one’s own choosing, where he comes from. There’s a reason no one or no- _thing_ can stir any attraction, ever bring him to attention, turn his gaze.

Now. Here. In a dingy public bathroom on break from a class he’s been fooled into taking by a guy with nothing going on in his head but a desire to implode his own life and fuck anything that moves, everything hijacked by a beautiful stranger who could kiss him and kill him in equal measure but either way, he’d thank her. Drawing on fantasies as grooved and familiar as real memories; he doesn’t just imagine it because those silk fingers _are_ hers, encircling him with a grip at once loving and dominant, pumping him in an idle tease and picking up the pace to send him into runaway, obsessive lust.

Chest tight, breaths stuttering, moans getting away from him sounding so loud on the tile, on the walls.

Skin and nerves thrumming with this desperation, things he’s felt and somehow not. No stranger to getting himself off nor with sex but it’s always been this mechanical thing, happening through a fog and a lacking sensation of reticence, distaste. Not indulgent, never ardent.

How unusual, to want it. To need it. 

Hearing his name though it’s never passed her pink lips, hot and satin skin against his so close, bereft of any seam between them, no liminal space where one of them ends and the other begins. His increasingly frantic stroking continues to bring him closer, rock him back, drawing it out and he’s never even wanted to do that before, linger in such an overwhelming and pleasurable space. 

He grits his teeth, chewing on the inside of his cheek as everything tightens, the spasm deviating from his taut rhythm, reminding him of her finger in her mouth, her thumb pressing and sliding over his tip _like her pretty tongue —_

and thank fuck his free hand does the single useful task of snatching up some tissue before he curses, hips jerking free of the steady pace and releasing, riding the wave with a groan, a whine caught in his throat, the quietest he can keep it. 

The sweat on him soaking him cold. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, feeling eyes on him where there are none. Cleaning up quickly and with fastidiousness because he has to walk out of here as placid and aloof as usual, no one can know, not in his rapid heartbeat or the sweat trapped between his skin and shirt, the throbbing of his cock. 

Not that he’s going back now — he has to drop this class, put as much distance between himself and this divine stranger as possible. Jerking off is a remedy to a temporary problem, working out the confusion and mess, and now it’s done. 

_Bang!_

The door to the restroom bounces off its hinges.

“Still in here, ya bastard? Let’s go!”

He loathes Naruto so much in this moment it’s almost unbearable. He thinks about smothering him in his sleep or poisoning his meals, if he ever ate anything but instant fucking ramen and questionable vending machine sandwiches. 

“C’mon you baby, you nervous?” 

Sasuke cards a hand through his hair, checks that he’s put back together, all straightened collars and zipped jeans, and adjusts himself one last time before swinging open the stall door. He doesn’t have to fake his irritation, at least.

Crossing to the sink, he scrubs his hands as Naruto heckles him above the sound of running water.

“You really are a mess, Sasuke. Could use some help with that.”

Sasuke snorts, eyes firmly on the faucets. Cleaning himself all the way up to his forearms, unable to shake off the uneasy spell. “You’re one to talk. Imploding a good thing over your own crisis.”

“Listen,” Naruto says, “I had a moment, a stupid one. Shoulda run it by Gaara—”

“Trying to set up a threesome without asking him first deserved a discussion.”

Naruto sags against a nearby sink, folds his arms. Kicks at the tile with a toe. “Didn’t think. Kinda drunk. And what do you know anyway? You hardly fuck anything, much less date.”

“Untrue.”

“‘Kay, but you don’t _enjoy_ any of it.”

Drying his hands, flicking away the excess, Sasuke grunts. “I’m just not a fucking idiot.”

They meet each other’s eyes, and Sasuke has the sinking feeling that Naruto’s uncanny instinct, the one that manages to outweigh his incredible stupidity, sees all the things he’s trying to hide. It’s in the smirk, all pointed canines and bright twinkling. 

Sasuke exits, and Naruto bounds out behind him.

“Getting my bag,” he prompts, “and then I’m leaving.”

“Ya can’t just dip, you weakling. Not with the way she was looking at ya!”

Rounding the corner, they both pull up short to avoid crashing directly into Ino. That long spun-gold hair crackles with a foreboding electricity, has a life of its own. Crossed arms, a popped hip, and brimming with attitude, different from his usual stalks, but he can still see what Naruto had been going for. 

“You,” she says, indicating Sasuke with her pretty chin. “What’s your name?”

“Hey-ey, Ino—”

“Shut it.” She drives this home by closing her fingers together, like snapping jaws. Naruto obeys. To Sasuke: “Well?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Who do you think? I’m here on reconnaissance. Seeing if she’s trying to make a pass at her usual emotionally unavailable type.”

“Ooooh, burn.”

“You friends with this moron?” she asks, pointing at Naruto.

Sasuke shrugs, an admission and expression of regret in one. His heartbeat kicks, anticipatory, of a promise that hasn’t been voiced.

“Stick around after class, handsome.” Ino’s already turning away, watching them over her shoulder. “If you can handle that.”

There go his hands, numb. Flexing them at his sides and throat dry as a desert as she walks away, knowing Naruto’s enjoying the sashay-sway of her hips while Sasuke’s anxiety flares at the thought of walking back into that room, taking up his seat as if he belongs, like he can look at Sakura without wanting to sink underneath her beautiful skin, as if he didn’t just let her pry apart his careful emotional stitches without a single word. 

Like the delusions of her sounds and sighs didn’t just make him cum, slam out an orgasm in a dingy bathroom in the art building in a vain attempt to stop thinking about her.

Desperation in fantasia.

They reenter the classroom, Sasuke dragging his feet. Pencils in a chromatic spectrum-set rest on every desk. Deidara in thorough discussion with a guy in a croptop whose interest in a miniature bird sculpture seems to delight him. The trio standing on the raised platform under the stark bright lights, their manner of conversation easy— they must already be close, to communicate unburdened. Perhaps normal people do this more adroitly than himself. 

Sakura holds a bottle of what looks like paint up close to her eyes, squinting. 

They take their seats again, Naruto flicking through the new colored utensils at random, Sasuke forgetting himself as his eyes, black as pitch, follow each fluttering movement of her hands, each bend and tendon flex, too long, until she catches him.

Wiggles her fingers at him in a wave. Seeing him now, rooting him to his spot in the universe.

If such could be a trap, he’s a bird and she’s the bars.

Curiosity, confusion, craving. And annoyance. There has to be a reason she feels uncontrollable, unsettling. She is fucking him up (literally) and it can’t stand.

“All good? Right then,” Deidara says, voice carrying. Students shuffle back to their seats, stifling any conversations. “You’re back for the second half of this class. No, I’m not teaching you anything before the extended pose: You’re here to experiment, let go of your preconceived notions of ‘art’ and ‘creativity.’” Extending his arms, fingers spread apart, the tongues on his palms slither and flex with a distressing realism. 

“You think he practices this shit in the mirror?” Naruto hisses, unable to keep silent. Sasuke ignores him.

On the other side of the room, a woman with thistly crimson hair makes a crude gesture with her fingers, shooting a wicked grin at the huge man next to her, who remits a warning look.

Deidara startles her with his callout. “If you’re interested in my hands, miss, let’s talk after. Otherwise, stop bothering your classmates.”

Flushing furiously, she crosses her legs and arms tighter than a straitjacket, sinking behind her drawing desk as if intent on melting into oblivion. 

“What happens,” Deidara continues, “when we change the shape of a familiar thing? Alter its reality, transform it into something else? Is its essence altered if it’s perceived in a different way, hm?”

He pauses for dramatic effect.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “But it’s worth thinking on, isn’t it?” 

Sakura sheds her robe this time with a more confident chin in the way of a flower blooming, discarding it as withered petals past prime. 

Meeting Sasuke’s dark eyes head-on, the tilt of her head signals some openness and intimacy. Blinking slow, her gaze an open window to the soul, inviting him in.

And though it’s hard to swallow, difficult to breathe, he stares back. 

He hopes to catch her off balance. There’s a small sign it works, a surreptitious inhale she keeps quiet.

Wrangles her pink locks into a tight topknot, careful to reign in the strays and pin it all into place. She drags her fingernails across the back of her neck, surprised at the sensation of feeling so bare.

Temari and Ino begin unscrewing bottles arranged at their feet, and now Sasuke notices paintbrushes and cups and sponges, an assortment of items that don’t coalesce, don’t make much sense. Deidara speaks over their quiet mutterings — they operate as a single unit, each movement from one pulling equal gravity from the other, adept in their tasks as Ino dabs a bit of paint on Sakura’s face, looking to Temari to confirm its shade underneath the lights.

“You’ve known her in one way, sketching her throughout this class, yeah? When we change the outer shell of something, what happens to our knowledge of that thing? Does it still exist if we’re unable to prove it in our reality? Does everything have an inalienable essence, or is it only what we can perceive?”

“Sir,” Tenten interjects, “is this safe? Does it have real gold?”

Deidara shrugs, leans back against his desk. “What does that matter?”

“Can’t you die from that?”

“That’s a myth,” the bristly redhead pipes up, arms still crossed. “Besides, it’s just paint.”

The guy sitting next to her gives her another severe look. “Karin, please—”

“Well, she’s wrong!”

Temari shakes a bottle back and forth in her hand. “Body paint, all. Relax.”

Sakura smiles at the class and flashes a peace-sign, then shivers as Ino drips a large gob of it on her shoulder. 

Sasuke’s expression doesn’t betray much, but he continues to bury the tip of his pencil through several sketchbook pages as her face begins to change, the color creeping as a shift in the shoreline altered by tides. A loose drop escapes a brush, lands on the white platform and flattens itself, unburdened, reaching for the boundaries of its endless shape. Back to her lips, forming words he can’t hear _but he can,_ the sound of his name on them and the pressure and sensation of intertwined fingers, nail-tips stroking his skin and places best unnamed — 

_Stop,_ he tells himself. 

_I love you,_ she responds.

Another tip snaps, and this time it doesn’t hit Naruto in the face but skitters across the floor to the other side of the room, earning him a reproachful stare from the guy in the croptop.

Sharpening his pencil with unnecessary aggression, he feels her gaze, searing and relentless. Though he’s been given some sort of temporary permit, his instinct says that she will set their pace.

“It’s like real gold,” Naruto says in an awed whisper.

Contrary to the urban legend, painting the body in full won’t cause imminent death for the model. Sasuke inherently knows this. 

But as he watches her skin drown in shimmering gold, transcend the human shape in gentle whorls and bends, piercing green eyes daring him to move — he believes suffocation is still a distinct possibility.

All the tension he thought he’d handled sinks in again, this clawing and obsessive adrenaline, the shallow give of his own lungs. 

The professor paces. Sasuke pines.

“If you can see something’s essence but its layers change, is it the same?”

She’s an object suspended in color but moving through manifold dimensions in a steady cadence, l’istesso tempo. At once she exists in front of him and in his bones, in corners she’d only know if they possessed the same skin.

But in his head are dusky forests and the grim creep of curses not understood, and as she shimmers under hot lights, eyes never breaking gaze, he doesn’t only feel her fingers in his. He can intuit, exist in this other place.

Deidara’s torpid orbit around the room only contributes to the hallucinatory sensation.

“Does it possess a shadow of the original, a ghost?”

 _And he winks reminding her who she is how_ **_smart_ ** _she is and she’s blushing and takes him and someone he can’t see by the hand._

The lights don’t move and neither does she, but still gold glimmers dance as shifting waves, swallowing more of her skin on her exalted path to becoming sanctified. 

And if he severs this connection, he’ll never know their truth.

Sasuke tries to put pencil to paper and simply render her, but of course it’s impossible. Too difficult to pluck her out of this dimension and create her in another, capture, in flat mundanity, the gilt curves and fervent eyes that peel him in layers thin and fraught as fruit. Dimly aware of the scritch-scratch of other pencils on other flimsy papers, that time is falling away from him, slipping through as clean water through a sieve.

Still she watches him, her staring so blatant now that Ino, finished with her part of the mess (paint or the intervention? perhaps both) and nudges Temari in silence with a sharp flicker of her eyes and brows that say a thousand things he’s loath to interpret.

It’s complete, the experiment, the performance: An alien effigy in totality. Breathing in this space seems an affront. Again, the friction of his clammy hands on his jeans, at once wishing he’d never come back and knowing it was the only choice, 

_kissing her under a cherry blossom tree, both unkempt and smelling of earth, bandages and strange knives and his eyes that ache with all they’re burdened with_

“Are you okay?” Naruto’s voice carries, of course.

And these visions are vivid and loving and wild and obscene because no stranger would ever want to know the way he’s seeing her now, translucent layers of a woman in all her sundry forms: Hanging laundry, windswept, in a sundress; elbow-deep in a man’s chest, forearms soaked in red; bare, legs around him and ankles locked to cling and take him in deeper, fingers pulling his hair, parting it from the scalp — 

“Pencils down, hm?”

As before, Deidara’s voice breaks the sunken artistic spell. Students surface from their creative trances, blinking in the bright clean lights. Sakura grants Sasuke a knowing smile before stretching her arms above her head, turning away to her friends. 

He sits frozen, staring at blank paper and gold graphite wisps before hurriedly flipping the book shut and stuffing it in his bag. He’s produced absolutely nothing and has never failed in anything before, but there are crazier things on his mind. Grades seem blissfully unimportant. 

“Leave them here, and don’t sign ‘em,” Deidara says, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “We’ll hang them and review anonymously as a group. Same time next week, all.” Waving a tattooed hand, he dismisses them without further ado.

Shuffling, as some pack up and depart, others lingering to wait for friends before heading out. The days have been lounging longer, extending their stay, and evenings cling tightly as it all slides toward a warmer equinox. No doubt the name of the prisoner-cum-professor will be a hot topic of conversation at the local campus dives. 

Sasuke dawdles, relieved when Naruto takes the reins and sidles up to Ino. 

“Sooooo,” he drawls, interrupting the trio’s chitchat, “quite a first class, huh?”

“You, Uzuamki.” Deidara folds his arms, gently nudging his way into the circle. “I hear you chatting through the whole class, hm? You’re annoying. Less of that next time.”

“Uh, sure thing, Mr — I mean—”

The sputtering trails off: Deidara’s already facing Sakura, who’s rubbing her cheek. “Nice job today, Miss Haruno. Appreciate the assist.”

Even dipped in gold, the flush of her skin is visible in the liminal space between scalp and hair. “Of course, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.” She inclines her head, now flecking the paint off with her fingernail.

“Should get that off, Sakura,” Ino says, grinning. “Bet it chafes.”

Wrinkling her nose, she waves her fingers in a gimme motion and Ino tosses her a backpack. They politely bid Deidara adieu, then Temari, who sweeps out without much of a goodbye and makes sure to shouldercheck Naruto, hard, on her way out. 

“Shower,” is all Sakura says as way of exiting the conversation, leaving Sasuke only with one last inscrutable expression. 

“Ow.” 

“You deserve it,” Ino says, folding her arms. “You’re a jerk and you humiliated her brother. If it was mine, I’d stomp you in the parking lot.”

“How is this only my fault? We’d talked about it, I just decided to _act_ on it.” Naruto mirrors her stance, sassing her in return. “Yernot even a little flattered that I wanted it to be you?”

Ino jabs a finger in his face. “That isn’t the point and you know it!” 

As they relive that fateful evening in which Naruto unsuccessfully proposed a threesome in a campus bar, Sasuke slips away, heading down the hallway in which Sakura disappeared.

Dark, damp, a light at the very end. The sound of running water slows his footsteps, and he wonders if he’s pushing his luck or finding it.

The sound of metal taps, and the water stops.

Hands numb, nerves tapdancing. Still, the door is open and he has a friend’s blessing, albeit flimsy, and he has to know why she has such a hold on him like this, how a stranger can put him under a spell. 

Why he knows every inch of a girl he’s never touched.

A last inhale and exhale (shaky, embarrassing), and he continues toward the light.

An area like actors’ dressing rooms, vanities lining a back wall with coat racks and lockers to the side. At one of them she sits wreathed in dusty light. With each step it becomes apparent she did in fact shower, pink ends of her hair curling slightly from the damp. 

She turns to meet his eyes. He freezes.

She giggles; his heart feels apt to burst. 

She makes that come-hither finger motion, and the urge to kiss her, pick her up and sit her on his lap, or sweep every bottle and pen off those dusty vanities and lay her out with abandon, as a work of art, pin all four corners of her and render her in senseless pleasure — 

He doesn’t remember walking up to her. She sits in the chair, gazing up at him with soft and curious eyes and only now does he take in the oversized jacket over short cutoffs, showcasing legs for miles. Plain sneakers. Glimmers and glimpses of gold folded into the cells in her skin, burrowing down deep in a way a simple rinse can’t reach. 

“So,” she says, breathless, “you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

She waits expectantly, as if she’s done so for him all her life.

“Sasuke,” he says. Clears his throat. “Sasuke Uchiha.”

Sakura doesn’t say _nice to meet you,_ or any other pleasantry. She nods, almost to herself, in confirmation.

“Ino-pig cornered you, didn’t she?” she asks, brows furrowed. “She’s like that. I guess she didn’t scare you, since you came after me anyway.”

All that comes is a noise in his throat, a grunt of sorts. She seems to take his taciturn, awkward behavior into stride. 

A sparkle, it catches the light. Before thinking about it, he brushes a thumb against her cheek, rubbing the gold remnants left behind.

Electricity, heartbeat in his ears. He yanks his hand away and she lets out a faint sigh. 

“Fuck,” he hisses. Skin heating up. Despite his lack of sexual grace, he notices the way she shifts in her seat, uncrosses her legs only to cross them again. Grips the arm of the chair. “I’m—”

“I hope it’s not an apology.” Her hand moves of its own volition, as if unaware of its mapping, explorative behavior; brushes his face, fingers a lock of his hair, down the back of his neck and lands on his left shoulder. Pauses as a thought passes through her expression, registering something.

“Excuse me.” She looks away. “What am I doing? You don’t even know me, you must think I’m strange.” But she doesn’t stop, fingers tracing some invisible circle on his left shoulder, slow but assertive, like following a line that already exists. 

Like drawing poison and pain from inside, lifting it to the surface and discarding it. How she seems to know something there plagues him, like some old injury. 

“But something about you . . .” Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head. “No, we’ve never met, right?”

“I see you’re getting acquainted!”

They recoil at the interruption, pulling apart. Embarrassed, suffering exposure. Ino’s grin is only matched by Naruto’s, and they luxuriate in twin expressions of smugness. 

“Then I don’t have to do further introductions,” she continues, tossing her long hair over her shoulder as she approaches, Naruto at her heels. Sasuke glowers at him, knowing he’s worming his way back into her good graces and by extension, Temari’s, in an ultimate resolution to repair the damage with his ex. 

“Hope you didn’t pounce before she rinsed off,” Ino jibes, elbowing Sakura. “Messy indeed. Of course, that could prove to be part of the fun—”

She yelps when Sakura elbows her back with impressive aggression. 

“We should all go out,” Naruto says, picking up the conversation thread. Sasuke’s expression sinks further into one of a man contemplating homicide. 

Sakura snorts at him, folding her arms. “Look at me! I’m still full of paint.” She rubs her face, lifts a lock of glittering hair for good measure. “I can’t go like this.”

“Most people in college bars are covered in glitter, Sakura.” Sasuke frowns at the way he says her name so easily, so familiar. “Ya won’t stand out. Well, I mean, ya will, ‘cause you’re pretty, but—”

Ino snickers. “Reel it in, train wreck.”

“Thought ya forgave me, Ino?”

“The jury’s still deliberating, and your ex disagrees.”

“Besides,” Sakura says, tone firm, “I live way off campus, so, no proper tub for miles. The shower here doesn’t cut it.”

“Oh boo-hoo, just come out when you’re done! Be fun, forehead!”

The nickname causes Naruto to make a curious face, but in his fashion, he seems to discard it. 

Sakura sits up straight, gearing up to retaliate with what’d probably be colorful language indeed if Sasuke didn’t speak first.

“I live close.”

The silence is so profound, one could hear a pin drop. 

Shifting his weight in discomfort, and he stares at nothing just above her shoulder, past a beckoning collarbone and slightly pink lips. 

“If you already have clothes — we can stop there.”

Sakura barely keeps her mouth from falling open.

“Perrrrrfect,” Ino trills, lunging for Sakura’s hand and yanking her out of the chair. “Easy! You go with him, put yourself together, and we’ll wait around.”

Sakura’s quiet protests of _but it’s a Tuesday_ and _a hairdryer?_ and _embarrassing_ are all steamrolled by Ino’s strong-arming. She shoves them toward the hallway, pressing a hand into the small of both their backs, sending them on their way.

“Off you go! Drive safely!”

She watches them make their way out, not speaking, hovering charged millimeters apart.

Naruto’s frowning. “They don’t really seem like they wanna come out with us.”

“They’re not coming back.”

“What?”

“Trust me,” Ino says, elbowing him. “They’ve got better things to do.”

Naruto snickers, then pulls the cliche of yawning and slinging an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Lemme buy you a drink, then.”

“Sure,” she shrugs, inspecting her fingernails. “As long as you don’t crawl back into one of your ex’s haunts. You’ve embarrassed yourself enough.”

The walk to the car lasts years.

Sun sinking, leaving behind a sky painted indigo and bubblegum pink. As they approach, Sakura whistles at the ride and breaches their careful distance, the opposing magnetism under pressure. 

Heat. The scent of late spring lingers as a haze, a promising season to come.

“I don’t know a thing about cars,” she says, tilting her head this way and that to observe the sleek vehicle, “but I assume this is a nice one.”

Sasuke shrugs with embarrassment, instead reaching for the strap of her bag hanging off her shoulder. She relents, lets him take it, and he stows it in the seat behind the passenger side as she runs a finger over the hood.

He stands behind her, realizing he’s in no hurry to whisk her anywhere, and that she’s not in any rush to go.

She turns to face him. Folds her arms.

“Listen.” She exhales heavily, a heaving sigh. “She’s aggressive like that. She thinks she’s doing what’s best for me, trying to get me to have fun. If you aren’t comfortable with this, I completely understand.”

But when she’s standing in front of him like this, the paint dust remnants in her skin catching the sundown flare, Sasuke’s a bit less terrified than he was. 

“But I also want to say . . .” And here she nibbles on the edge of her fingernail, steeling herself to continue. “That if this evening went a certain way — if you were interested in, well, if I, _we,_ wanted to . . .”

She whines a little, frustrated, staring at his shoes.

“I’m up for whatever we do, wherever this goes.” Each syllable is careful, a delicate but clear message. “Because I feel something about you that I can’t really explain.”

When her eyes flicker up to meet his, steady and seeing his soul, the sensation in his chest some blend of pain and craving and the way she’s standing, swaying a little and watching him after her gentle reveal like she’s waiting for him to _f_ _ucking do something about it,_ her hand trails down his arm to test the waters and does she know just the touch of her is enough to set him on fire and shatter the flimsy veneer he’d built up over the last few hours in her orbit?

He hesitates, opens his mouth only for nothing to come out.

“Oh,” she says, crestfallen. “You’re about to be uncomfortably honest with me, aren’t you?”

Pauses. “There’s something you should know.”

“Ohhhh,” she moans, recoiling. “I fucked this up, didn’t I? Misread this?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I did. Before you say anything else, I have to tell you.”

Sakura’s lips twist, like she’s trying not to cry.

Sasuke physically braces himself and ends up closing his eyes, _twice the fucking coward._

“The way I’ve been feeling about you is something I haven’t dealt with before. Not like this. I couldn’t handle it. So during the class break I—”

He can hear Naruto in his ear telling him he’s a complete idiot, for even thinking that somehow this would be worth revealing. No wonder his mother is constantly setting him up in an endless line of excruciating coffee dates and business-masquerading-as-social dinners with people who all remind him of his own cousins. She’s worried he’ll die alone and without producing any heirs, likely.

But this stranger deserves to know the awkward, degenerate mess with whom she’s getting into a car late at night.

“You what?” Sakura nods at him to go on.

“It felt like an issue I had to work out. So I took the time to do that.”

Sakura narrows her eyes. “I don’t think I follow.”

Sasuke sighs, carding a hand through his hair, feels his face heating up. The next words come through gritted teeth.

“You’re stunning and all I could think of was _fucking_ you, okay? So I—"

“—jerked off,” she finishes. “Over the intermission.”

“Yes.”

His eyes fall to the sleek hood of the car, the way the last of the daylight hits it and scatters. Sakura twists her lips in a way he can’t parse, unable to discern her thoughts.

She laughs, and he feels like dying right there in the parking lot.

“I’d tell you I really didn’t need to know that. Could have kept it to yourself. But all of this, meeting you, is strange. Maybe fated, but strange.”

She bites her lip, and Sasuke immediately wonders about the amount of space in his backseat.

“But then,” she says, voice dropping into some dusky octave, and her fingers fiddle with the fine threads of his shirt, “I’d be a hypocrite. Because I was just there to be the model, to do something impulsive . . . at Ino’s insistence.” 

Hands buzzing at her touch,

“When you walked into that class, and your friend was so stupid and loud — I saw you. And while I was supposed to be doing a job, all I could look at, and think of,”

and she’s tugging on him to pull him close, whispers like a sifting fire dancing in his ear,

“was you. About you touching me. Or I’d walk up to you, take your hand,”

her breath hitches, pressing her hips against his as a suggestion, swaying and the fabric of his shirt is bound to tear with how tightly she’s gripping him,

“climb on top of you, into your lap.” 

The last consonant pops in the shell of his ear, and his hands come up to hold her at arm’s length, by the face, fingers in her hair, a thumb against her cheek feeling the gold stardust grit underneath — 

— and she whispers, ruining him with those green, glittering sundown eyes.

“But I’m not so bold.”

And he crushes his mouth against hers, hard, eliciting an _oh!_ and it’s amazing how it can feel like dying and the overwhelming hum of _living_ all at the same time, especially when she returns the kiss in kind, in the same frenzied fervor and harder, deeper like she’s apt to imbibe the rest of his soul and take it for herself; the heel of her hand lands hard on the car hood as he bends her, backs her up into it and they break for air, lips puffy and bruised like two rounds out of a fight, but she lunges in again and he obliges; and later he’ll reflect on how the fuck he knew how to kiss her properly, but perhaps the truth is, she just taught him.

Divine. If it was a taste seized and bottled, this would be it. 

But it’s not enough, not enough.

She clutches him closer, and gods there’s no space in between them but it’s where he wants to be, with her hips against his and he can tell, somehow, by the way she moans, to go on; his hand comes up to cup her ass, lift her swiftly up and onto the hood of the car, breath catching as she gently falls on her back, then gasping as he presses her in, letting her take a bit of his weight, cock settling between her legs and against her heat, slit and seam of her cutoffs; she scratches his back desperately seeking the hem of his shirt, intent on yanking it over his head right there, cursing softly into his mouth, _oh fuck,_ nipping at his lip to make him groan, the cool metal of the car slick against her sweat.

It’s not until some lucky passerby offers a two-tone whistle of what’s probably encouragement that they break apart, eyes wild, crashing back to earth. 

Remembering that they’re strangers.

Sasuke lifts his weight, slides off the hood while muttering _shit, shit,_ bringing her with him, an arm locked around her waist. 

“Not so bold?” Sasuke’s breathing is heavy, something in him loose and messy. Unhinged.

Sakura laughs, sharp but embarrassed bursts, as she surreptitiously readjusts a bra strap, smooths perspiring palms over her cutoffs. “Just a nude model for an art class on a whim.” 

Sasuke’s tucking in his shirt as cover for readjusting himself. Brings a hand to his neck, running his fingers over the beginnings of a bruise.

They stare at one another for a moment.

“So should we—?”

“Sure.”

Sakura lets herself into the passenger side, buckling in and leaning her elbow against the door, the heel of her hand hiding her mouth. Eyes wide. As he starts the car and eases his way out of the parking lot they don’t speak. 

Time passes in silence. Every now and then Sasuke glances at her, watching her in profile as the day dwindles, leaving only a thin horizon line left with color. Streetlights begin to flare on and the light swoops over, catching the glitter and gold in her skin.

She breaks the détente first. 

“I don’t know why you seem like something familiar,” she whispers into her hand.

He doesn’t respond, but he’s listening.

“Like . . . wearing a sweater you’ve had for a long time, something comfortable. Fits you just right. With a scent you know.”

Now she sits up straighter, watching him with sharp eyes as thoughts play on a film reel: _How do I know her? Where have we met?_ Thinks of her again at a laundry line amid ruffling grasses, flicking his fingers against her forehead, soused in the taste and scent of something he’s known before.

He hears her breath catch in her throat — 

“I feel like I already know you.” 

Out the window, life flits by in brand new color.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is "Gold Guns Girls" by Metric
> 
> It might end up 4 chapters I am a messy pacer oh welllll

**Author's Note:**

> You've reached the pinnacle of self-indulgent, welcome back hotties ✨
> 
> Chapter title is from "Gold Dust," by Galantis.
> 
> Rated for the later chapter(s)? Shouldn't be more than a two or three-shot, but I don't make promises. 
> 
> I've seen the cool new jam is to offer a list of emoji's and ask you to comment with them - this is your permission to write literally whatever you want even if it's just keyboard mashing, I'm really not picky but I do love hearing from people, so!
> 
> I am not / haven't been an art student so if something's wrong I take the heat for it - I'm writing a fic for NaruIno involving glassblowing so if you're good at that shit hit me up because I'm just using the internet


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